“With the launch of any new magazine—especially one that hopes to be “both inspirational and aspirational and sometimes even a bit confrontational”— there will be opinions on it, good, bad, and otherwise,” thus writes Jim Meyers President & Founder of the Imagination custom publishing and content marketing company.

Orange magazine Mr. Meyeres continues “is about providing some understanding and perspective, asking questions and exposing you—the reader—to things that maybe you haven’t thought of before. Working with leading companies and associations, Imagination has intimate knowledge about how to help you connect with your customers or members. We want to share that with you.”

In the second issue of the magazine Rene Ryan director for Imagination’s client strategy interviewed me on the topic of magazines, custom media, the future, free content among many other things. Her lead and first question are below:

His “little black book” is filled with numbers: 685 in 2008; 704 in 2009; 170 in the first quarter of 2010. But what do they mean? We discuss the print industry’s commitment issues with Mr. Magazine.
Q: To many of us in the industry you are known simply as “Mr. Magazine,” a champion for the printed word and director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi. While that’s true, you’re also one of the industry’s harshest critics, saying that major media companies are “in a coma” and “not living in this world” if they think things are going to go back to the way they were. Since we’re not going back, what needs to change?

A: The No. 1 thing is to stop the “welfare information society.” We have been giving our content and our experiences away for free for years. We’ve put people on this information welfare model for so long that they have now the sense of entitlement; they expect everything to be for free. I laugh when I now hear media companies saying, “Oh, we need to start charging online. We need to start putting up paywalls.” How about you start charging for print first?…